John 1:14a
"Stop saying 'I'm only human'," admonished the guest preacher at church on Mother's Day. "To be fully human is to be like Christ."
The thought spun me into a whirlwind of Gospel-sized pondering.
In the beginning, God created man in His image. Not long after, man was tempted into eternal separation from the Being in whose image he was made by a fruit that promised a likeness to God, the ability to know good and evil.
Image. Likeness. Life. Death.
Skip over several thousand years of fruits born by the knowledge of good and evil to a human baby born to a simple girl in an unlikely place. The incarnation - fleshly, tangible presence - of God. God became human.
This human - Son of God, Son of man - lived human-ness flawlessly. He alone could balance the knowledge of good and evil with perfect submission and unthinkable humility.
And then, He who became human, suffered and died that we, who forsook the One whose image we bore, could finally be united with God Himself. This, not to be like Him, knowing good and evil, but to know Him and to house His Spirit.
Jesus Christ was the ultimate human. And the Gospel truth is that God redeemed our reaching for glory by a glorious reaching of God to us that we might be transformed into the likeness of Christ - the Glorious One Himself.
There is no "mere human", for we are all image-bearers. And for those that know Christ Jesus and the power of His resurrection, to be human is to be like Christ - glorified in humility, magnified in service to the Creator, whose image we bear.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5-11
